Working on SimpleCenter, with our goal of connecting all the different media devices of the world, requires us to think a lot about dealing with all of the various DRM systems. And much of that thinking results in a headache... there seems to be no good solution, and no good way for us to make the world a happy place.
So I read with interest this article, about the death of DRM:
Who's Killing MP3 and iTunes?
I've generally been a defender of the music industry. What happened to the industry was unprecendented. Putting myself in their position, formulating a strategy to deal with digital delivery and the mass sharing out there would have been choosing between many bad options. This doesn't mean that they've handled the situation well... just that it was (and is) not an easy position to be in.
But as we enter 2007, there is an explosion of the number of types and variants of devices used to play digital music. While Apple still leads this market, cell phone manufacturers are all making a big push into this area, with some success. But DRM doesn't work here... there are too many devices, too many schemes.
When you think about it, the music industry sells billions of dollars of high quality, non-DRM music every year - in the form of CDs. And there is nothing illegal about ripping a CD. As such, there seems little hope that DRM will control the illegal sharing and distribution of music. DRM assumes that sharing will happen, attempting to make it more difficult to share. But as long as the industry continues to flood the market with non-DRM enabled CDs, DRM is just plainly useless.
But just as importantly, requiring DRM actually hurts the position of the record labels. DRM is a technically difficult problem, much too difficult for a record label to manage. In order to enable DRM systems to operate with their music, record labels have given control of distribution to technology providers - Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo!, etc.
On the other hand, if the labels no longer required DRM on their music, they could take back control of distribution, selling direct to the consumer. Today, Apple has a big advantage in negotiating with the labels, since they own the entire distribution channel. But if the labels were to give up on DRM, they could take back control. This doesn't mean that Apple wouldn't sell songs, but a record label would be able to threaten pulling the songs from iTunes, since they'd have lots of other channels (including their own website or artist websites).
Before all the filesharers of the world rejoice in victory, I suspect that if the labels did sell non-DRM music, they would actually increase enforcement on the filesharing networks. At that point, I think the public would have a generally more positive view of the industry, as there would be legitimate outlets to buy music without significant restrictions.
I don't see this as an improbable outcome. DRM systems continue to be cracked, file sharing shows no signs of abating, devices are everywhere, and consumers are buying lots of them.
As a developer on SimpleCenter, I can only hope that this happens, and quickly. While we might consider DRM interoperability as an opportunity, it's hard to imagine at solution that would be optimal for our users.
So here's to the end of DRM. We barely knew ye...
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